Tamzin Outhwaite

Tamzin Outhwaite is a British actor best known for playing Melanie Owen (née Healy, Beale) in the BBC soap opera EastEnders.

Before EastEnders

Outhwaite attended the Stagestruck Theatre Company as a young teenager. At 16 she left school to join the London Studio Centre to study drama and dance. She went on to many stage roles including Grease and Oliver! before having bit parts in The Bill and Men Behaving Badly.

After EastEnders

Outhwaite left EastEnders in 2002, shortly after the departure from the soap of co-star Martin Kemp, who had played her husband.

In 2002, she was given a leading role in BBC army drama Red Cap, however the series ended in 2004. During Red Cap, she starred with Nigel Harman who later joined EastEnders himself. According to press reports, she also dated him for a short time.

After this she went on to star in a number of television dramas, including Hustle, Final Demand and Frances Tuesday.

She fronted an advertising campaign as part of a one million pound contract with cosmetics company Avon; she also modelled the Spirit range at Debenhams in 2004.

She had been edging into the Hollywood film industry, starring alongside Wesley Snipes in 7 Seconds. However this had very little success.

In 2005, she played a part in the ITV drama Walk Away and I Stumble, in which her character was seen dying of a brain tumour. More recently she can be seen in Hotel Babylon, a new BBC1 drama.

Tamzin is also now starring in the ITV drama series Vital Signs as a frustrated mother who decides to leave her dreary job at the supermarket and enrol in medical school.